{"id":7095,"date":"2014-11-14T02:09:41","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T02:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7095"},"modified":"2014-11-14T02:09:41","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T02:09:41","slug":"you-go-old-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7095","title":{"rendered":"You go, old friend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>My former colleague and still-friend Jon Talton has issued a blistering rebuke of the rebuke.<\/p>\n<p>That is he&#8217;s taken to task the Republicans who have opposed Barack Obama since Day One of his presidency for the trashing they orchestrated in winning a Senate majority and strengthening their majority in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.roguecolumnist.com\/rogue_columnist\/2014\/11\/democrats-are-stupid.html<\/p>\n<p>I cannot really add to his excellent analysis of the current political climate and the context in which it continues to exist &#8212; strange as it seems, according to Talton.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll note just a couple of points.<\/p>\n<p>First is that presidents never deserve all the credit they seek nor the blame they receive. We have this element in our government called &#8220;balance of power.&#8221; We split the power among the three branches &#8212; executive, legislative and judicial. Take the federal courts out of this argument and we still have two branches of government with co-equal power.<\/p>\n<p>Last time I checked, governing remains a team sport. So, to whatever extent the president deserves the blame for when things go south, then he should take it. But the Congress is supposed to be a player in this game as well.<\/p>\n<p>Second is that Barack Obama is not radical leftist. As Talton noted:\u00a0&#8220;Obama is &#8230;\u00a0a Jerry Ford. With the &#8216;center&#8217; pushed so far to the right, he accepted the radical fiscal &#8216;austerity&#8217; that is such a drag on recovery and average Americans. (Reagan kept spending, and not merely on the military).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;new center&#8221; now seems to exist somewhere to the right of where traditional conservatives used to navigate. We can thank the tea party caucus for that. What&#8217;s more, they&#8217;ve done a great job of demonizing the president, ascribing all kinds of evil intent at so many levels I cannot even begin to keep track.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll stop now and refer you to Jon&#8217;s essay attached to this blog post.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good read and worth your time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My former colleague and still-friend Jon Talton has issued a blistering rebuke of the rebuke. That is he&#8217;s taken to task the Republicans who have opposed Barack Obama since Day One of his presidency for the trashing they orchestrated in winning a Senate majority and strengthening their majority in the House of Representatives. http:\/\/www.roguecolumnist.com\/rogue_columnist\/2014\/11\/democrats-are-stupid.html I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7095\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">You go, old friend<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[540,849,2571,3907,4531],"class_list":["post-7095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-capitol-hill","tag-jon-talton","tag-republican-party","tag-tea-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}